


Stowaways

by vaguely_concerned



Series: Scoundrels and Thieves 'verse [15]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 10:30:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8368900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: Hanzo meets someone on his annual trip back to Hanamura.





	

Hanzo dropped from the stairwell to the floor of the cargo hold, giving his surroundings a quick scan even though it was unlikely that anyone would come down here until the shipment was ready to be unloaded.

The swaying of the ship was barely noticeable down here, but the slick smell of motor oil stained the air. There were enough places to hide away, if you didn’t give any consideration to comfort; between the shipping containers and various crates there were all kinds of spaces and dark corners where you could stay out of sight for days, and they were going to reach Tokyo long before that would be necessary.

He eyed a gap between two shipping containers over by the far wall, out of the way of anyone who might pass by, but decided it was too tight a fit and turned away - that was, until he heard something clatter to the ground in there. He wrinkled his brow and crouched to glance in.

A small girl – perhaps seven or eight years old - was scrambling to pick up a lit flashlight. They stared at each other. She clicked the flashlight off, then seemed to realize the game was up anyway and turned it back on.

“Um…” Her eyes were wide and shining with fear.

He tilted his head to see her better through the narrow opening. “Hello there.”

“Hey,” she said thinly, clutching her pink backpack to her chest. “Who are you?”

“...no one, really.”

She looked vaguely panicked. “Papa said I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He paused, then added: “My name is Hanzo.”

His Japanese felt rusty. It had been a long time since he’d used it.

“If I know your name you’re not _quite_ a stranger,” she ventured tentatively.

“True.”

She nodded with relief, releasing her death grip on the backpack somewhat.

“What is your name, then? So you are not a stranger either.”

“Emiko,” she said proudly. “Tanaka Emiko. My mother picked it for me.”

“She chose well.”

She beamed, apparently forgetting for a moment to be mistrustful of this complete stranger. He suspected distrust was not really in her nature to begin with - he hoped there was normally someone there to watch out for her. ”She was _really_ smart.”

He glanced around the dark space between the shipping crates. “How did you end up down here?”

“Papa took me. He told me to find somewhere no one could find me. Like hide and seek.”

“Hm. I am hiding too. Seems like you have found a good spot here - may we share it?”

She hesitated only for a moment. “Yes,” she said decisively. “Yes. I’m a little…”

“A little what?” he prompted when she didn’t go on.

The words came so quickly that they nearly stumbled into each other. “...a little scared of the dark.” She blushed. “But I’m not a baby! But I also don’t want to be alone. But now you’re here too, so it’s okay.”

He ducked his head to fit through the gap, but found that the space beyond it was larger than he had thought; he could stand upright quite comfortably.  

“Where are you headed?” he asked, making sure to drop his bag - containing his bow, the arrows and several sharp implements - somewhere she couldn’t readily see it.

She sat cross-legged and rocked absentmindedly back and forth, putting the flashlight down on the floor where it would provide the most illumination. “Tokyo.”

He settled down against the opposite wall from her, giving her as much room as possible. “And is there someone waiting for you there?”

“My aunt and uncle.”

“Ah.” He took another look at her and saw more this time - the clothes that were too big for her and must be somewhere around the third iteration of hand-me-down at this point, her trainers so worn that her left toes were in danger of poking through. “And where will your father be?”

“Papa needs to work a lot right now,” she said dismissively. “That’s why I need to stay with them for a while, that’s all. He’ll come too – soon, when he’s saved up enough money.”

All the unquestioning trust of youth. “I’m sure he will.”

She eyed him, still a _little_ wary – which was only reassuring, really. “Where are _you_ going?”

The shrine, the cherry blossoms, his father’s hands. “Home.”

“That’s good! I’m going to see my whole family too.”

“It’s only for a day.”

“Oh. Well, that’s still nice.”

He didn’t answer.

She didn’t seem to take his silence as a discouragement, though her voice was slightly brittle with nervousness. ”My aunt and uncle have a dog. He’s really huge– like, THIS huge,” she stretched out her arms as far as they would go, ”with lots and lots of fur and big teeth, but he’s actually very nice and not scary at all. I’m going to pet him when I get there, because Papa won’t know he’s shedding all over my clothes and get all grumpy.”

Hanzo hummed tactfully.

”Papa is allergic to dogs,” she clarified. ”So he sneezes when he washes my clothes afterwards. He’s not _usually_ grumpy, just then.”

”Is that so.”

She nodded. ”Yup.”

For a while she expounded on several other subjects – how she’d sneaked down here in the first place, the relative _total_ unfairness of homework, a book she was reading about birds that had once belonged to her mother – and as the anxiousness drained away from her she spoke with a great deal of hand gestures and conviction. Hanzo found that all he really needed to do was make the occasional sound of interest to keep up his end of the conversation. That was good, because his mind was already ahead of him, slowly filling up with cherry blossoms.

“I have biscuits,” she said at some point, muffled by a mouthful of crumbs. “Do you want some?”

Hanzo eyed the crumbled, sticky remains in the plastic box. “Hm. I think you should keep them. You need them more than I do.”

“‘Kay.”

She munched happily for a while.

“How long does it take to go to Tokyo?” she asked. “I’ve never gone there on a boat before.”

“We’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.”

“Oh.” She looked down at the empty box, apparently realizing too late that she should have rationed them out. “Okay.”

She brought out her book about birds – an actual, old-fashioned paper book, a little tattered around the edges but still holding together – and started reading in the glow of the flashlight, her mouth moving around the longer words. After a while she leaned over and asked: ”What’s this word?”

He glanced down, startled out of his own thoughts. ”’Habitat’. Where it lives, what its home is like.”

”That makes sense. Thank you.”

From then on he was aware of her darting looks at him every now and then, several times pulling in a breath as if about to say something and then stopping.

”What is that?” she asked eventually, pointing at where his tattoo showed because his sleeve had ridden up a little. Damn. He sighed, but at least she was very unlikely to ever know what it signified.

”A tattoo,” he said, unnecessarily, pulling the sleeve up a little further to show her.

She ’ooooh’ed, tilting her head to try and see more of it. ”Like a _gangster._ It’s on your whole arm?”

”Yes.”

For a while she narrowed her eyes, as if thinking something over, but she went for boldness in the end. ”Can I see it?”

He blinked. ”I...”

”If you don’t mind,” she hurried to add. ”And, er, ’Can I see it, _please_ ’. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

He hesitated, then shrugged. Why not. He unbuttoned his shirt enough to free his arm.

She stuck her face close enough that her nose almost brushed his forearm. ”Are they dragons?”

”They are.”

”Cooool. Haruko’s big brother said just getting a small one of his girlfriend’s name on his shoulder really hurt,” she said, with some reverence.

”Let us hope the girlfriend’s name was very short,” Hanzo said, secretly adding: _For when he’ll inevitably have to cover it up with another._

On one memorable occasion only their father’s swift intervention had stopped Genji from forever sporting, on his left cheek, the name of a girl he’d met that same night at a party. For some reason Genji’s slurred attempts at explaining how’ love at first sight is _real_ , Father, sometimes you just _know’_ had not moved him. Once he’d slept it off he’d been grounded for a month.

Emiko eyed him sideways. ”Are you okay?”

”Hm? Oh. Yes, I’m fine.”

”Alright. Well, she broke up with him two weeks later, anyway,” she added breezily. ”Did yours hurt a lot? Did you have to sit still for a long time?”

At the time the pain had seemed inconsequential compared to the heaviness of responsibility and history being etched into his skin.”Not really, and yes.”

She looked at him with renewed respect. ”That’s so awesome.”

”It’s a... tradition, in my family.”

”In my family we have ’traditional’ rice pudding,” she said glumly. ”I don’t see how it’s so special just because my great grandmother came up with the recipe.”

”Not a fan?”

”It’s all... gloopy.”

”I see.”

She sat deep in thought for a while. ”...maybe I could get a tattoo, if I ask Papa really nicely and do lots of chores.”

”I think you better wait until you’re a bit older,” he said, diplomatically, feeling a pang of sympathy for a man he had never met.

”Hmmm. A hummingbird. I like hummingbirds. And the bee hummingbird is the smallest bird in the _world_ , so it wouldn’t even take that long. I...” She yawned hugely, rubbing at her eyes with a fist.

”What was that?”

“‘M sleepy.”

Hanzo checked the time on his - untraceable - phone, shrugging his shirt back on. “No wonder. I suspect it’s long past your bedtime.”

“Eight o’clock,” she said vaguely. “Sometimes ten when it’s a birthday.”

“Then it is _way_ past.”

“...I wanted to sleep before but I couldn’t because it was too dark and there were weird noises.”

“You can sleep now,” he said. “I will keep an eye out.”

She smiled, her eyes already starting to droop. “Okay.” She put her backpack down on the hard metal floor and used it as a pillow, curling up under a ratty old blanket she’d brought. After no more than five minutes she was snoring heartily.

He found himself incapable of relaxing while she slept, constantly listening for approaching footsteps and looking for movements in the shadows. After a while he gave up and simply sat there, eyes fixed on a single spot on the wall. He shouldn’t drink with her there, even if she was asleep.

The darkness slithered around him with harsh, mocking whispers, and he knew they were right.

 

\---

 

He must have half-dozed eventually, because he barely noticed her getting up to stand in front of him, hands balled tightly at her sides.

“Um… er… Hanzo?”

He saw the distress in her eyes and tensed, ready to jump to his feet. “What is it?”

“I really need to pee,” she whispered loudly, shifting from foot to foot.

The relief washed through him; his shoulders fell back down. He glanced around the room, zeroing in on something that looked like a broom closet.

“Hm.” He went over to pry the door open and, as he had suspected, there were a few buckets and a mop, along with some other cleaning supplies. He held out a bucket. “Will this do?”

Her face briefly engaged in a tug of war between disgust and desperation, but as she wriggled on the spot the despair quickly won and she grabbed it. “Okay. Don’t look,” she ordered sternly. He turned around to face to the wall. There was a long silence.

“Can you cover your ears with your hands?” she asked eventually. “I can’t do it while you can hear.”

Thankfully she couldn’t see his face, or he had the feeling he would have been duly berated. He dutifully pressed his palms to his ears for a while, until she showed up at his side and poked his waist.

“You can stop now, I’m done.”  She looked around shiftily, then darted over to put the bucket back in the closet and shut the door. Oh well, that would be one unhappy surprise for someone on the crew.

After she was safely back in the hiding spot she ate the rest of her packed food, which looked rather hopeless - “Papa is… not so good with the rice, but he tries” - then rummaged around in her backpack. As it turned out she had a coloring book, a few crayons and a cheerful lack of eye to hand coordination. He gathered there were princesses involved, some of them wielding giant swords; she tried to explain who the characters were, but Hanzo wasn’t quite up to date on the intricacies of children’s cartoons, as it turned out.

“What color should their dresses be?” Her brow wrinkled with indecision. She held out her crayons without taking her eyes off the page. “What do you think?”

“Hm.” He studied them, then picked up the red and the lighter green. He raised an eyebrow, awaiting the verdict.

She nodded approvingly and started in on the page.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be like living with my family all the time,” she said after a while, not looking up from her industrious yet haphazard coloring. The words had the ring of confession to them. “Usually it’s just me and Papa, but now there’ll be my grandparents and my aunt and uncle and my five cousins and the dog and the two cats - I’ve been to visit before, but…”

She gnawed her lip a little.

“I am sure they will be glad to have you there.”

“Is your family big?”

He wished very much that real life had a stop button, or at least a fast forward. “...we used to be.”

“Huh. My oldest cousin has lots of video games, though,” she added, with the blessedly minimal attention span of a child. Her face lightened considerably. “And on the phone she said I could play the skateboard one as much as I wanted when I got there. _And_ the dragon one, if I don’t tell my aunt.”

“At least there’s that.”

She nodded emphatically. “There’s blood and everything.”

There had been children in his family too, of course. Aimi had been only three when he left. He wondered where they had ended up sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep and drinking didn’t help - all the children who would have been his responsibility, left in the hands of strangers as the clan unraveled.

“I already miss Haruko a little too,” she said balefully. “She’s my best friend. We made these before I left. So we still match.”

She solemnly showed off a braided bracelet on her wrist. It was already getting a little grubby.

“Very nice.”

She accepted the compliment with a nod and quiet dignity. “Do you have a best friend?”

Hanzo floundered, feeling like someone had struck him over the back of the head with a shovel. “Of course,” he lied. There was only one face that occurred to him, and that was from a long time ago - _and_ in all fairness they had been a lot more than friendly.

“What are they like?”

That _stupid_ belt buckle. “...he’s funny. And very clever.”

“That’s a good kind of friend to have.”

“Mhm.”

She held up the book. “Look, you picked good colors. And for the third…” She considered her shabby pencil case like Michelangelo might his pigments. “Hmmmmm.”

“What is your favorite color?”

She lit up and rooted around in the pencil case.

“I like blue best,” she declared, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she colored in the third dress. “It’s _cool_.”

He almost said “I used to think so too”, but he didn’t. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, listening to the scratch of crayon against cheap paper. Her constant running commentary, in all its whimsical glory, made it hard to think about anything else.

He was grateful.

”On Saturday we’ll go see the Ferris Wheel on Odaiba. It’s enormous. Papa said the first one was destroyed in the war, but they rebuilt it even bigger. We’re going to go at night, when it’s all lit up. Sometimes they do lots of fireworks too.”

”I know. I have seen it before.”

”Are you going there now?”

”No.”

“Why not? It’s _amazing_!”

“Because I am old and tired,” he said, not opening his eyes.

She made a doubtful sound. “Not that old. My papa looks a little like you. Grey but not wrinkly - hah!”

“Hm?”

“You smiled!”

“...yes?”

She squinted at him. “You didn’t before. Not the whole day.”

_And there I was thinkin’ you just didn’t know how to smile._

“...I used to. More, anyway.”

“Huh.”

There was no way to explain it to her, and thankfully she didn’t ask.  He wondered if Jesse had some silver at his temples now or if his hair was simply the same warm brown.

Her voice went small. ”I hope Haruko can come visit in the holidays. It’s so strange because it’s not like she’s dead or anything but it still feels like she’s... gone.”

Hanzo stared into the darkness, wishing his head would just be quiet. ”I know what you mean.”

 

\---

 

When it was time to leave she almost bolted out into the open and up the stairwell before he could stop her. He held out an arm. “Wait.” If anyone were to come down here things could get very awkward. He wouldn’t want to have to break any arms while she was watching. He listened for footsteps, then glanced around the room. “Hm. It’s clear.”

She ducked under his arm with lightening speed.

“Hold on there, young lady,” he said, hooking a finger into the strap of her backpack to stop her in her tracks. “We still need to be careful.”

She giggled and swatted at his hand. “Aaaaw. Bor- _ing_.”

“Even so.”

“Okay,” she sighed, and to her credit she did stick close to his side until they had sneaked their way up to the deck, where they could blend in among the crowd of people waiting to get ashore. He subtly held on to her backpack, just so she wouldn’t get lost in the bustle. She impatiently tried to get a glimpse of the port as they closed in on the harbour, but even on tiptoes she couldn’t see over the railing. He briefly had a near-heart attack as she scurried along the gangway, dangerously close to the edge, but she made it over safely.

Once they were ashore Hanzo immediately saw the problem - the sheer mass of people around them made singling out any one individual near impossible, faces blurring together.

“Do you see anyone you recognize?” he asked.

“Er,” she said, scouting around from her vantage point at waist-height – she was small for her age. “Not yet.”

They stood there for fifteen minutes, then twenty minutes, then half an hour, the worst of the crowd slowly dispersing.

He wondered what on earth he’d do if no one came for her. It was not as though he could take her with him, and he only had a day left - but he wasn’t leaving her out here on her own either. She was biting her lip now, hard enough that it whitened.

“They will be here soon,” he told her. “It is hard to find anyone in all this chaos.”

She glanced up at him and nodded. Someone jostled them on their way past and Emiko lost her balance; Hanzo managed to catch her, but her backpack fell to the ground and spilled its contents on the ground. She looked down at her scattered crayons and the book about birds, her eyes getting suspiciously shiny – she retrieved her book and hugged it closely to her chest. It had gotten a bit battered in the fall.

He kneeled down and started to pick up the crayons, putting them back in. “It will be fine,” he told her, closing the backpack and handing it to her. ”Don’t worry.” The small sniffle she couldn’t stop from escaping stung faintly in his chest. It reminded him of Genji as a little boy, whenever he would trip and skin his…

As he stood back up he spotted a woman walking up and down the dock with a worried air, shouting something Hanzo could barely pick up. “Emiko! Emiko, are you there?”

“I think there is something you should see,” he said. “Over there.”

She blinked in surprise, then looked around to follow his line of sight. He had to smile when her whole body erupted with joy and she broke into a flat sprint. “AUNTIE!”

He watched as she launched herself into her aunt’s waiting arms and was safely lifted up. She gestured wildly, almost dislodging her aunt’s glasses in the process, the grin splitting her face in half - she turned to point towards him, or at least where he had been before stepping into the shadows. He had just enough time to catch her crestfallen expression before he turned and walked away.

She was safe. There was no other duty keeping him there.

 

\-------

 

He realized too late that he had never returned the red crayon to her. He kept it with him… just in case.

**Author's Note:**

> The Ferris Wheel Emiko talks about is Daikanransha (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikanransha), except rebuilt to be even more humongous.
> 
> Also I’m thinking that Hanzo can’t go around dressed like he is in-game *all* the time, since that means he would be flaunting THE most distinguishable feature on his whole body wherever he went. Surely even he must occasionally do up his shirt, much as it pains me to imagine it. (After all he’s from a long line of ninja - people well known for dressing like simple farmers if it meant they could get the drop on nobles and murderkill them for money. Then maybe kill their employer too if someone else outbids them lawl. #MyKindaCharacters)


End file.
